The Scientific & the Divine: Conflict and Reconciliation from Ancient Greece to the Present

Front Cover
Rowman & Littlefield, 2003 - Philosophy - 334 pages
There have been many--too many--attempts over the centuries to bring science and religion into harmony. James A. Arieti and Patrick A. Wilson survey and assess these various efforts, from Plato to Aquinas to present-day philosophers and theologians. The Scientific & The Divine examines the perennial issues that keep science and religion at arm's length, clarify those issues, and fit them into an historical framework. This book is ideal for use as a textbook in any course that discusses the interplay between science and faith. Arieti and Wilson do not push an agenda--they take a critical, analytical look at the theories that started when the ancient Greeks realized the religious implications of scientific discovery. The Scientific & The Divine shows the historical continuity of both the central issues and the many potential solutions, and demonstrates which of these theories comes closest to saving the marriage between science and religion.

From inside the book

Contents

The Problem
3
Some Preliminary Examples
5
Aristotle
7
Nehemiah
9
Is Human Reason Able to Explain the World?
12
The Nature of Reason
13
All Men Desire to Know
16
Degrees of Certainty
17
Bonaventure
202
Thomas Aquinas
206
Aquinass First Two Proofs of the Existence of God
207
The Immutability of God and the Mutability of Creation
209
Aquinass Difference with Maimonides on the Immutability of God and Creation
210
Aquinass Final Three Proofs for the Existence of God
211
The Degree to Which Science Can Explain God
213
Conclusion
214

Knowledge as a Good
20
The Rationality of Desiring Knowledge
21
Human Nature and Human Questions
24
Bad Answers and Socratic Ignorance
25
Religions Answers
27
The Negative
31
Sciences Answers
35
The Negative
37
What Is Science?
43
The Problem
44
Platos Solution
46
Aristotles Conception of Science
49
Problems Concerning Religion and Science in the light of Aristotle
55
Modern Views of Science
64
Faith and Scientific Knowledge
71
The Origin of Scientific Attempts to Explain the World
76
Thales and Monism
77
Parmenides and Heraclitus
79
Empedocles
83
Democritus
84
Conclusion
87
The God of Ancient Philosophers
92
Platos God
96
Aristotles God
97
Ciceros God
103
Neoplatonism
109
How God Affects the World
111
Human Access to the Divine
113
The God of Philosophy
118
Reconciling Science and Religion
125
General Considerations Concerning the Reconciliation of Science and Religion
127
Gods Invisibility
128
Evil in the World
129
Gods Omniscience and Human Free Will
131
Human Corporeality
132
Plato
135
Philo of Alexandria
144
Reconciling Science and Religion in Medieval Islam
154
al Farabi
155
Avicenna
156
al Ghazali
160
Averroës
164
Reconciling Science and Religion in Medieval Judaism
176
Abraham ibn Daud
182
Maimonides
185
Reconciling Science and Religion in the Christian Middle Ages
200
Reconciling Science and Religion from the Renaissance through the Enlightenment
218
Galileo
220
Johannes Kepler
222
René Descartes
223
Baruch de Spinoza
226
Isaac Newton
227
Gottfried Leibniz
228
Final Thoughts on the Seventeenth Century
231
Immanuel Kant
232
Conclusion
236
Science and Religion in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
239
Charles Darwin
241
A Few Prominent Physicists of the Twentieth Century
243
Max Planck
244
Erwin Schrödinger
245
Conclusion
246
Science and Religion at the End of the Twentieth Century
250
The Intelligent Design Research Program
251
Dembskis Explanatory Filter
252
Refinement of the Explanatory Filter
254
God of the Gaps
255
Explanatory Power
259
Religious Status
260
Scientific Status
262
Anthropic Selection Effect
263
Applicability of Mathematics
266
Humes Objections
267
Transcendent Designers
268
Keith Ward
269
Arthur Peacocke
284
John Polkinghorne
287
NonOverlapping Magisteria
290
Conclusion
292
Conclusion
302
General Comments
303
Types of Reconciliation That Are Possible
306
Denial of Science
307
Redefining the Key TermGod
308
Separating the Spheres of Religion and Science
309
Problems
310
A Proposal
311
Conclusions about God and Humankind
312
Works Cited
315
Index
323
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